Professor Haunani-Kay Trask -- Frontpage Magazine Nationally Circulated Article of June 25, 2003 and Biographical Profile of Trask As an Enemy of The United States

* Advocate of Hawaii’s independence from the U.S., and of the state’s deportation of all non-ethnic Hawaiians

* “The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.”

“We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.”

The statement transcribed above is but a small sampling of the venom and hatred that typically emanates from the mouth of Haunani-Kay Trask, a Professor at the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. A guru of the racial separation/ethnic nationalism movement, Trask routinely abuses her position an educator (and American tax dollars) to spread racist and anti-American doctrine throughout the University of Hawaii student body, sometimes violently opposing the dissenting voices that arise on campus and elsewhere on the Island.

While racial separatists and ethnic nationalists may pursue separate methodologies, they both seek the creation of a racially divided Hawaii. Ethnic nationalists demand independence from the United States, by international intervention if necessary, while racial separatists, having reconciled themselves to remaining part of the United States, “demand the right for ethnic Hawaiians to control all the government and social institutions.” Under both ideologies, whites and other non-ethnic citizens of Hawaii are essentially reduced to resident aliens or second class citizens who risk losing both property and voting rights. These non-ethnic Hawaiians may even be forced to pay massive reparations for their alleged complicity in the “illegal” annexation of Hawaii.

Although Professor Trasks’ rhetoric frequently fluctuates between these two movements, her politics reflect an emerging consensus between the two. As opposed to choosing between racial separatism or ethnic nationalism, radicals like Professor Trask seem to have decided to pursue both independence from the United States as well as the subjugation or deportation of all non-ethnic Hawaiians.

Since joining the University of Hawaii, Professor Trask has sought to foster a “hostile work environment that includes an atmosphere of fear and intimidation toward any student who dares to contradict the party line of the Center for Hawaiian Studies.”[2] In fact, Professor Trask has even promoted her classes by claiming in speeches that if students believe “the United States is good, [take my class] and think again.”[3]

In essays published by Professor Trask, she repeatedly rejects “the concept of academic freedom as a bourgeoisie white intellectual construct,” despite being a member of a major department at a taxpayer-funded state university. For example, in 1990, a white undergraduate student named Joey Carter penned an editorial in the University of Hawaii student newspaper expressing dismay over the continued use of the word “haole” in Hawaiian society. Mr. Carter’s concerns centered around the fact that the word was becoming increasingly depreciatory, and “when spoken with bitter sarcasm and prolonged intonation” seemed to carry “some of the burning hostility of the modern use of the word ‘nigger.’”

In response to the student’s letter, Professor Trask unleashed a racist, ad hominem.attack on Mr. Carter. Dismissing Carter’s concerns as “uninformed, childish moaning” Professor Trask both acknowledges the hostility inherent to the word “haole” while refusing to stop using it, declaring that Carter’s discomfort was “too bad,” because, as she informed Mr. Carter, “you are a haole and you always will be.” Trask then suggested that if Carter did not like enduring racial slurs, he should “return to Louisiana.”

By continually referring to an undergraduate student as what has increasingly become the Hawaiian equivalent of the intolerable racial epithet “nigger,” Professor Trask has made it clear educating young women and men will take a back seat to her radical and racist political agenda.

However, Professor Trask’s racial instigation is not restricted to mere verbal assaults. On September 5th, 2002, the Honolulu Advisor reported, “threats of violence had intimidated the director of the Academy of Lifelong Learning and frightened away the elderly students who had signed up for [Professor Kenneth] Conklin’s course on Hawaiian sovereignty.” In response to this incident, Professor Trask not only expressed her outrage that a man who opposes the racist elements of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement would be allowed to speak at the Center for Hawaiian Studies, but also overtly endorsed physical violence as a means by which to protect the racist agenda of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. When asked to comment on the cancellation of the class due to threats of violence, Professor Trask responded, “it’s great that somebody came back at [Professor Conklin] and threatened him.”

In order to support her overtly racist, violent ideology, Professor Trask clings to the illusion that the Hawaiian people have been subjugated by the “racist, colonialist United States of colonial America.” Not only is the Professor’s assertion redundant, it is inaccurate as well. Although Professor Trask insists that, “disease-laden racists…took our government and imprisoned our queen” and continue to forcibly occupy Hawaii through military occupation and institutionalized racism, such claims are far off target. In fact, after a revolution overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, anti-monarchists founded a constitutional Republic with full international diplomatic recognition that was to govern in place of the deposed monarchy. This Republic then offered a treaty of annexation to the United States, which Congress and then President McKinley accepted. Although it is politically expedient for Professor Trask to cling to her fantasies of military occupation and racial subjugation, the history books clearly refute the alleged basis for her racist rhetoric.

Professor Trask’s historical revisionism is designed to defend a system of racial segregation that resembles the policy of apartheid that tore apart South Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century. The ethnic nationalists and racial separatists Professor Trask represents “agree that Hawaiians are indigenous people of Hawaii and are therefore entitled to political and economic supremacy” over all non-indigenous Hawaiians.

Such entitlements create a system of racially defined Kanaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiians) supremacy where the 20% Kanaka Maoli minority would govern the 80% non-Kanaka Maoli majority. In some aspects of Hawaiian life, such a racially divided system has already begun to develop. Presently, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands and Kamehameha schools are all restricted to Kanaka Maoli. The parallels between such a system of racially defined governance and South African apartheid are unmistakable.

Another dangerous element of the racial separatist/ethnic nationalist movement is these radicals’ rejection of all property rights for non-Kanaka Maoli. Both groups believe that gods gave birth to the Hawaiian Islands and then gave birth to Hawaiian forefathers; therefore ethnic Hawaiians have a family relationship to the land and the gods, which can never be shared with anyone who lacks Hawaiian ancestry.

Perhaps even more chilling than Professor Trask and her movement’s vision of an independent and racially segregated Hawaii, is their open sympathy for the terrorists who murdered thousands on September 11th. Speaking to crowds after the 9/11 attacks, Trask proclaimed, “Chickens have come home to roost. . . . What it means is that those who have suffered under the imperialism and militarism of the United States have come back to haunt in the 21st century that same government. . . . Why should we support the United States, whose hands are soaked with blood?”

This profile was adapted from the article "Hate America Professor," written by Ryan O’Donnell and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on on June 25, 2003.

“We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.”

The statement transcribed above is but a small sampling of the venom and hatred that typically spills from the mouth of Haunani-Kay Trask, a Professor at the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. A guru of the racial separation/ethnic nationalism movement, Trask routinely abuses her position an educator (and American tax dollars) to spread racist and anti-American doctrine throughout the University of Hawaii student body, sometimes violently opposing the dissenting voices that arise on campus and elsewhere on the Island.

While racial separatists and ethnic nationalists may pursue separate methodologies, they both seek the creation of a racially divided Hawaii. Ethnic nationalists demand independence from the United States, by international intervention if necessary, while racial separatists, having reconciled themselves to remaining part of the United States, “demand the right for ethnic Hawaiians to control all the government and social institutions.”[1] Under both ideologies, whites and other non-ethnic citizens of Hawaii are essentially reduced to resident aliens or second class citizens who risk losing both property and voting rights. These non-ethnic Hawaiians may even be forced to pay massive reparations for their alleged complicity in the “illegal” annexation of Hawaii.

Although Professor Trasks’ rhetoric frequently fluctuates between these two movements, her politics reflect an emerging consensus between the two. As opposed to choosing between racial separatism or ethnic nationalism, radicals like Professor Trask seem to have decided to pursue both independence from the United States as well as the subjugation or deportation of all non-ethnic Hawaiians. Hawaiian Professor Kenneth Conklin seems to have devised the most appropriate term for this consensus between separatists and nationalists: they are simply Hawaiian Supremacists. (It’s interesting to note, however, that Trask herself has Caucasian ancestors.)

Since joining the University of Hawaii, Professor Trask has sought to foster a “hostile work environment that includes an atmosphere of fear and intimidation toward any student who dares to contradict the party line of the Center for Hawaiian Studies.”[2] In fact, Professor Trask has even promoted her classes by claiming in speeches that if students believe “the United States is good, [take my class] and think again.”[3]

In essays published by Professor Trask, she repeatedly rejects “the concept of academic freedom as a bourgeoisie white intellectual construct,”[4] some sort of racist notion she is apparently by no means bound to, despite being a member of a major department at a tax payer funded state university. For example, in 1990, a white undergraduate student named Joey Carter penned an editorial in the University of Hawaii student newspaper expressing dismay over the continued use of the word “haole” in Hawaiian society. Mr. Carter’s concerns centered around the fact that the word was becoming increasingly depreciatory, and “when spoken with bitter sarcasm and prolonged intonation”[5] seemed to carry “some of the burning hostility of the modern use of the word ‘nigger.’”[6]

In response to the student’s letter, Professor Trask unleashed a racist, ad hominem.attack on Mr. Carter. Dismissing Mr. Carter’s concerns as “uninformed, childish moaning[7]” (how scholarly of her), Professor Trask both acknowledges the hostility inherent to the word “haole” while refusing to stop using it, declaring that Mr. Carter’s discomfort was “too bad,”[8] because, as she informed Mr. Carter, “you are a haole and you always will be.”[9] Trask then suggested that if Mr. Carter did not like enduring racial slurs he should “return to Louisiana.”[10]

By continually referring to an undergraduate student as what has increasingly become the Hawaiian equivalent of the intolerable racial epithet “nigger”, Professor Trask has made it clear educating young women and men will take a back seat to her radical and racist political agenda. Imagine if the situation was reversed, and a white professor in the south was making racially derogative comments regarding an African American student in a University newspaper. Such behavior would not be tolerated, and nor should it be tolerated from Haunani-Kay Trask.

However, Professor Trasks' racial instigation is not restricted to mere verbal assaults. On September 5th, 2002, the Honolulu Advisor reported, “threats of violence had intimidated the director of the Academy of Lifelong Learning and frightened away the elderly students who had signed up for [Professor Kenneth] Conklin’s course on Hawaiian sovereignty.”[11] In response to this incident, Professor Trask not only expressed her outrage that a man who opposes the racist elements of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement would be allowed to speak at the Center for Hawaiian Studies but also overtly endorsed physical violence as a means by which to protect the racist agenda of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. When asked to comment on the cancellation of the class due to threats of violence, Professor Trask responded that, “it’s great that somebody came back at [Professor Conklin] and threatened him.”[12]

Although a University Professor endorsing on-campus violence is stunning, coming from Haunani-Kay Trask can it truly be that surprising? After all, Professor Trask has composed poetry riddled with themes of hate and physical violence. For example, observe Trasks’ poem “Racist White Woman”:

Racist White Woman
I could kick
Your face, puncture
Both eyes.
You deserve this kind
Of violence.
No more vicious
Tongues, obscene
Lies.
Just a knife
Slitting your tight
Little heart.
For all my people
Under your feet
For all those years
Lived smug and wealthy
Off our land
Parasite arrogant
A fist
In your painted
Mouth, thick
With money
And piety

While playing politics to enforce a radical ideology is nothing new in the world of the academic Left, Professor Trasks’ willingness to employ racial slurs and violent intimidation and imagery to advance her agenda is a new Leftist low. Again, imagine if the situation was altered slightly, and a Christian Professor wrote such a poem fantasizing about violence against Muslims? The hypothetical professor would unquestionably be forced to resign. Why then does the University of Hawaii persist in allowing this woman to spread her hateful rhetoric across its campus?

In order to support her overtly racist, violent ideology, Professor Trask clings to the illusion that the Hawaiian people have been subjugated by the “racist, colonialist United States of colonial America.[13]” Not only is the Professor’s assertion redundant, it is inaccurate as well. Although Professor Trask insists that, “disease laden racists…took our government and imprisoned our queen[14]” and continue to forcibly occupy Hawaii through military occupation and institutionalized racism, such claims are woefully off target. In fact, after a revolution overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, anti-monarchists founded a constitutional Republic with full international diplomatic recognition that was to govern in place of the deposed monarchy. This Republic then offered a treaty of annexation to the United States, which Congress and then President McKinley accepted. Although it is politically expedient for Professor Trask to cling to her fantasies of military occupation and racial subjugation, the history books clearly refute the alleged basis for her racist rhetoric.

Professor Trasks’ historical revisionism is designed to defend a system of racial segregation that resembles the policy of apartheid that tore apart South Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century. The ethnic nationalists and racial separatists Professor Trask represents “agree that Hawaiians are indigenous people of Hawaii and are therefore entitled to political and economic supremacy” over all non-indigenous Hawaiians.[15]

Such entitlements create a system of racially defined Kanaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiians) supremacy where the 20% Kanaka Maoli minority would govern the 80% non-Kanaka Maoli majority. In some aspects of Hawaiian life, such a racially divided system has already begun to develop. Presently, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands and Kamehameha schools are all restricted to Kanaka Maoli.[16] The parallels between such a system of racially defined governance and South African apartheid are unmistakable.

Another dangerous element of the racial separatists/ethnic nationalist movement is these radicals’ rejection of all property rights for non-Kanaka Maoli. Both groups believe:

That gods gave birth to the Hawaiian Islands and then gave birth to Hawaiian forefathers. Therefore ethnic Hawaiians have a family relationship to the land and the gods, which can never be shared with anyone who lacks Hawaiian ancestry.[17]

Thus, claims to private property, in the eyes of these Hawaiian Supremacists, are invalid. Of course, such claims again tend to ignore historical reality, for example, the fact that before the United States annexed Hawaii, “government lands were held on behalf of all people, [while] Crown lands were held by the office of the head of state.[18]” At no point were these lands the property of a single race or ethnic group. Such inaccurate racial claims against private property are dangerously similar to those made in Zimbabwe just before President Robert Mugabe began confiscating white farmland and murdering the land’s owners.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Professor Trask continues to argue she is not a racist because she does not have the political means to be a racist. Such protestations are ridiculous. One can hardy conceive of a better example of power than the influence a University Professor has over his or her students. Given Professor Trasks’ well-documented history of racist rhetoric and support for violent intimidation, what undergraduate student would dare risk angering this volatile and unpredictable woman? Furthermore, although the Hawaiian racial separation/ ethnic nationalist movement does not, at this moment in time, have the power to enforce racial policies in the government, the acquisition of such power is one of its primary goals. By her own definition of racism, “a historically created system of power in which one racial/ethnic group dominates another racial/ethnic group for the benefit of the dominating group,”[19] Trasks’ expressed desire to exert perceived “rights” of an ethnic Hawaiian minority over an ethnically mixed Hawaiian majority is clearly racist. Otherwise, fringe, backwoods white supremacy groups are, by Trasks’ definition, not racist. For the time being, fortunately, Professor Trask and her ilk lack the power to enact their racist fantasies. However, make no mistake about it; it is the goal of Hawaiian supremacists to achieve this power, seemingly by almost any means possible, so that these fantasies might become an apartheidic reality.

Yet ultimately, perhaps even more chilling than Professor Trask and her movement’s vision of an independent and racially segregated Hawaii, is their open sympathy for the terrorists who murdered thousands on September 11th. Speaking to crowds after the September 11th terror attacks, Professor Trask proclaimed that, “Chickens have come home to roost…What it means is that those who have suffered under the imperialism and militarism of the United States have come back to haunt in the 21st century that same government…. Why should we support the United States, whose hands are soaked with blood?”[20]

Professor Trasks’ remarks should not be dismissed as mere Leftist anti-American rhetoric. Rather, her post-9/11 comments reflect several of the darker concerns expressed about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Since Trask and others in the movement clearly view themselves and the terrorists as fellow travelers, both having “suffered under the imperialism and the militarism of the United States,”[21] it can be inferred that they feel some solidarity with terrorists. Such an inference is only strengthened by Professor Trasks’ post 9/11 comments in which she refuses to support the United Stats in its War on Terror. Once a philosophical alliance is struck with terrorism, how long until a material relation evolves?

This is not to suggest that Professor Trask or any of her fellow activists have aided or are planning on aiding terrorists. However, as Professor Trask rages on about how “death to the conqueror is justice”[22] is it truly that outlandish to envision a Hawaiian Supremacist activist aiding a hostile foreign power, or even a terrorist organization? In the meantime, however, American tax dollars will continue to pay Haunani-Kay Trask’s salary, providing her with a forum through which she can broadcast her anti-American message loud and clear.